No. 147. The Slab. Yesterday afternoon, an 18-wheeler huffed hugely into his sculpture-yard and offloaded this prodigious tablet, this horizontal stele of a sculpture--actually, more a faceted crystal than anything as blunt as a slab. It was huge and looked as soft as cheese or salt-water toffee. It was a gift--an extraordinary gift--from the Fredericton, New Brunswick-based artist, Robin Peck--who, in his estimation, was indisputably the finest sculptor in the country. How to repay such kindness? A more difficult and far-reaching question would be how to acknowledge and repay such sustained morphological and metaphysical virtuosity?